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9/09/2014

TIFF Review: 'Mommy'

Mommy

(Canada, 134 min.)

Written and directed by Xavier Dolan

Starring: Anne Dorval, Antoine-Olivier Pilon, Suzanne
Clément

Programme: Special Presentations (Canadian Premiere)

Photo courtesy of TIFF.

Good news, TIFF-goers: Mommy
lives up to the hype. Xavier Dolan’s Cannes sensation (and Jury Prize winner)
finally comes home with its Canadian Premiere at the Toronto International Film
Festival this Tuesday. It would be an understatement to call Mommy Xavier Dolan's best film yet.
Dolan, coming to TIFF with his fifth film at the ripe ageof twenty-five, proves
himself a cinematic force with this searing, audacious film.

Previous Dolan films
might show some missteps—the kind of things for that invite quippy comments
such as, ‘… but it's good for a filmmaker of his age,” or “even Orson Welles
didn't make Citizen Kane until he was
26...”. (That last one is totally my bad.) These backhanded comments on the marks of a voice finding its
best form of expression might be recurrent from anyone who’s been as hot and
cold on Dolan’s films as I have been, but Mommy
irons out all the kinks in Dolan's flamboyant visual flair and harnesses them
to great effect. It's a work of a master, not simply a young master, for Mommy proves unequivocally that Dolan is
a major talent. There are no buts about it: Mommy
is a milestone.

Mommy feels like
the film Dolan intended to make in his breakout 2009 work I Killed My Mother—the parallels are unmistakable but it’s not as
if he’s repeating himself—for it tells a comparable portrait of the tumultuous
yet loving relationship between a mother, Diane aka 'Die' (Anne Dorval), and
her son, Steve (Antoine Pilon). Their bizarre relationship is doubly unique
thanks to a new clause in near-future Canada that allows parents to send their
unruly kids packing. Steve, defined by an overdose of ADHD, comes out of the
program and back into his mommy's care following an incident at the
rehabilitation centre. Steve is to Diane what heroin is to a junkie and vice
versa. These family members thrive off one another, colliding in
self-destructive highs that bring them together as much as they tear them
apart.

Mommy is an
exhausting, full-throttle emotional journey as mother and son yell expletives
at one another and go head-to-head in coarse Québécois vernacular. Their love has
its own language—that of the George and Martha variety—and Mommy amplifies the aggression of their relationship by raising the
decibel of their endless screeching matches to the highest level. Mommy pummels the audience with near-deafening passion.

Dolan makes the emotional force of Mommy even tighter by employing a claustrophobic 1:1 aspect ratio
much like the frame of an Instagram shot. The snug framing makes Mommy almost unbearably intimate as Die
and Steve are closer than any mother-son duo have been shot before. (DP André Turpin
deserves full praise for making Mommy
such a visual thrill.) The brazen square shot of Mommy lets Dolan take his signature visual flair to great
heights. Dolan sometimes lets aesthetics and visual flourishes get the better
of his previous films—remember that scene where it rains scarves in Lawrence Anyways?—but Mommy sees the director control all the
advantages and drawbacks of such visual audacity to the best effect possible. Style
is substance this time around, and Dolan's constricted framing of Mommy encloses this tightly, perversely
knit family in a world of their own. The fever of Die and Steve flows right
into the negative space on either side of the screen.

Dolan almost blows it when Steve opens his arms and
stretches the aspect ratio to a complete widescreen during one freeing sequence
where Steve, Die, and their neighbour-friend Kyla (Suzanne Clément) sail
through the streets on their bikes and long board. The sequence gives Mommy a cathartic release as this happy
interlude acts as the eye of the storm before the tension between the family
reignites and explodes with greater consequences. The expansive intermezzo in
the visuals briefly reveals how full and great a complete widescreen can be,
but the return to the Instagrammy 1:1 ratio almost suffocates the viewer with
its unrelenting magnification of the film's raw emotion. The same widescreen manipulation appears towards the end of Mommy in a devastating rejection of convetional happy endings. The effect is very,
very powerful.

The nifty aspect ratio only amplifies what's already in the
frame, though, since Mommy features
some powerhouse performances. Anne Dorval is a tour de force in her second
titular mommy role of the Dolan oeuvre. Spunky, sexy, and flamboyant to the
hilt, Dorval's lively performance is one of the best of the year. She rocks
Die's flamboyant threads (Dolan did the costumes too) in total MILF mode,
mashing Die's gum and strutting her stuff in a provocatively sexualized
performance. She exposes Die's ugly side, too, while balancing both her
character's desire and her inability to be a mother with her heart-wrenching emotion.
It’s easily one of the standout performances of the year.

Mommy likens
itself to I Killed My Mother, too, in
that the mother is amply more likable than her son is. Steve, like Mother's Hubert, is an annoyingly bratty
child who is bound to test any viewer's patience and, in turn, make Die's
devotion to her son twice as compelling. Steve, unrelentingly aggressive and
boisterous, pulls pranks with little regard to the consequences of his actions
akin to many contemporary youth (and adults…) of today’s OCD Internet culture
who fire off missives and Tweets with no regard for the way their actions and
words affect others. The social media friendly aspect ratio of Mommy makes the parallels
more resonant for today’s self-obsessed selfie culture.

More likely to win more sympathy, though, is Kyla, who is
played remarkably and compassionately by Clément. Kyla suffers from a crippling
speech impediment relating to the stress of her career as a teacher, but
assuming a maternal role with Steve in an attempt to help Die lets her find her
voice again. Clément holds much of the film together when it's almost too much
to bear by making Kyla a troubled onlooker seduced by the intoxicating violence
of Die and Steve's relationship.

Take, for example, one of the highlight scenes of Mommy where Die invites Kyla over for
dinner. The stuttering supper guest gets an awkward show to go with dinner
when Die and Steve have an impromptu dance party in the kitchen to the tunes of
Céline Dion. (In French, no less!) This weirdly sexual scene sees Kyla watch
Die and Steve shake to Céline and have lots of fun… but then they pull together
a bit too closely and Steve runs his hands up to his mother’s breasts for just
a beat too long before she tells him to stop. It’s creepy in its own beautiful
way, but the Céline centrepiece is easily the most delicious slice of a very
rich film as it brings together Dolan’s resourceful way of layering character,
song, and image into one very tightly packed punch.

Dolan truly hits his stride with Mommy. The trademark visuals, style, and energetic soundtrack all
display a mastery of the art form, but it’s really his ability to craft such
deep, authentic characters and draw out such uniformly strong performances from
his cast—and to do so within unconventional confines of film form—that proves
him a master. That he made such a great film only at the age of
twenty-five, well, only makes Mommy all the more impressive. Take that, Orson Welles!

Rating: ★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Mommy screens:

-Tuesday, Sept. 9 at 9:30 pm at the Princess of Wales

-Wednesday, Sept 10 at noon at TIFF Bell Lightbox 1

Please visit www.tiff.net for more information on this year’s
Festival.